In the event of oil spills, seeps, releases of liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into aqueous environments (such as oceans, coastal waters, lakes, estuaries, rivers, etc.) various systems are currently available to try to contain spills when and wherever they occur. These systems generally include booms that are often brought on site after the event and placed in a configuration suitable for containing spills. The process of placing these booms at the site of spillage is essentially reactive and the scale of the potential damage to the environment can be best illustrated in recent high profile incidents. Any system which can provide improvements in terms of rapidity of deployment and efficacy of containment would constitute a significant technical advance in protecting the environment.
One of the objectives of the invention is to provide one or more technical advances over existing booms and their deployment methods.
The following prior art documents are acknowledged: FR2301638, GB1486976, U.S. Pat. No. 5,810,512, and WO2005/042851.